Book Geek Review: Star Wars Battlefront II- Inferno Squad

So for Christmas last year I really got doubled down on Star Wars related media. From clothes, to plaques to books and video games, my family knows what I like. One of the gifts was the tie in novel to the most recent Star Wars video game, which I’ve been playing a lot of (and enjoying, as shown in the other column I wrote today) , and after reading “Star Wars: Lost Stars” it was on to the next book down on my list, this one.

In the book, “Star Wars: Battlefront II: Inferno Squad”, by Christie Golden, we see the forming of the squad that are the main characters of the video game, they are an elite team of soldiers that works for the Galactic Empire. What was most fascinating about this book to me was it’s incorporation of other elements of the saga, areas that we haven’t seen covered yet. Namely, there is much discussion and debate in the book of the events of Rogue One: A Star Wars Story, from the Battle of Scarif to the tactics of Saw Gerrera’s rebel offshoot, we see how those events affected other parts of the story, namely from the Imperial perspective.

These new books, and canon really put a human face on the Empire, which felt rather topical at times, in that there are those on the other side that are merely following the party in power, and they see the other side as traitors and terrorists, but in reality they’re all just people with different views, though the people at the top of the Empire are legit evil bad guys, for most it’s just a belief system, and that’s how it is.

And there are those against the Empire that also take things a bit too far, Saw Gererra’s Partisans, who try to continue his vision of freedom for the galaxy by any means necessary.

Politics aside, the book makes a great companion piece to the video game, and adds overall depth to the lore of Star Wars, and is worth reading even if you don’t like the game it’s attached to.